The Hidden GFC
The world might be in the process of rebounding from the Global Financial Crisis,
but did you know that we're experiencing another GFC?
The Global Food Crisis.
This Food Crisis is due to factors including population growth,
decreasing land and resources, like fuel and water,
and the ways we use and store food.
Changing climatic conditions also affect the amount of food available.
Many experts predicting that this crisis will become worse in the next
fourty years.
This problem is frequently called 'food security'.
So what is food security?
The Food and Agriculture organisation defines food security as being a state
when,
"all people at all times
have physical and economic access to
sufficient, safe and nutritious food -
to meet their dietary needs and food preferences
for an active and healthy life."
In some countries, food shortages have already caused riots.
Like those seen in Tunisia and Algeria and there are often times of food insecurity
even in countries like Australia or Japan. These are after interruptions to
supply from natural disasters like cyclones and earthquake's or even
droughts.
Broadly, there are five main issues that we as a society need to address
if there is to be global food security. Availability - is there enough food to
feed the population of the world? Accessibility - does everyone have access
to enough
food everyday?
Acceptability - does the food available meet cultural requirements?
Adequacy -
is the food of sufficient quality and does it include all the nutrient
requirements?
Stability of Source - is it readily and always available?
In Australia, we produce enough food for about sixty million people,
but we only have twenty-two million people at the moment.
Well, what's the problem then?
There are three main reasons for Australia to be concerned about food security.
The first is food availability.
Floods, cyclones and droughts, cause significant interruptions to food supply
and these result in big increases in price which affect people's quality of
life. As more and more of the weekly income is spent on the grocery bill,
less is available for other necessities in lifestyle purchases. The second reason
is that Australian society is becoming increasingly urbanized.
This means that the general population
is becoming disconnected from the land and the way that food is produced. The
way Australian's see food and their attitudes towards it, are affecting food security.
Thirdly, Australia has responsibility to lend a helping hand with global food
supplies. Global food productivity needs to be increased by about fifty percent
above the current levels in the next fourty years and this needs to be done in
changing climatic conditions. So there's lots of work to be done.
But where do we start?
We can start by recognizing the importance of the food industry, which
nowadays is very sophisticated and scientific.
Australia has great technical skills to offer other countries. We need to build
on these strenghts by encouraging training and careers in agriculture to ensure ongoing
research, collaboration and development.
We also need respect food.
We need to understand what it takes to produce it and reduce our wastage of it.
Start by growing your own veggie patch. We also need to improve the yield of our
crops to ensure that we can meet global food demands.
Increases in yields can be gained by a number of methods.
Improvements in traditional plant breeding techniques, new technologies
like genetic modification,
selective breeding using DNA markers
and resource management will help to get more food from fewer imputs. We
essentially need to do more with less. Improvements in our attitudes,
plant breeding techniques
and accepting our responsibility to help insure global food security will allow Australia to
play a role in meeting the demands of the world population that is expected to
be over nine billion
in the next fourty years.